NVIDIA drivers giving 2010 MacBook Pro owners Lion upgrade headaches

Bugs in some NVIDIA drivers that shipped with Lion appear to be the cause of a …

Users of last year's MacBook Pro models with NVIDIA GPUs are finding the upgrade to Lion to be far less than perfect. Problems in the NVIDIA graphics drivers that shipped with OS X 10.7 appear to be at the root of kernel panics and system freezes that leave an affected MacBook Pro with a blank black screen. Though Apple wouldn't confirm the issue directly to Ars, support engineers appear to be actively investigating the issue. For now, rolling back to Snow Leopard appears to be the best option.

Numerous reports of crashes have filled an Apple Support discussion thread that sprung up July 20, the same day Lion became available via the Mac App Store. Since then, several crash reports posted to the discussion show a clear pattern of crashes happening in drivers for the NVIDIA GT330M that shipped in 15" and 17" Arrandale-equipped MacBook Pros with switchable Intel and NVIDIA graphics.

Some symptoms of the problem include repeated kernel panics, a screen that suddenly goes black, or the inability to wake from sleep. The specific cause isn't clear, but a variety of graphics-related functions seem to trigger the problems, including switching on the NVIDIA GPU, switching to internal or external displays, and running certain GPU-intensive operations in various applications. In some cases, a black screen can recover by switching between internal or external displays. Some users have also reported success in using the open source utility gfxCardStatus to force a system to use the integrated Intel graphics and/or disabling sleep to prevent the problem from happening.

The problem apparently affected Lion during its beta testing by developers, and users are frustrated that the issue made it all the way to the shipping version of Lion.

Apple did not respond to our request for comment on the matter, but several users said that support engineers are actively investigating the issue and collecting crash reports from users that contact Apple Care.

Aside from the aforementioned method of forcing a MacBook Pro to use the Intel IGP with gfxCardStatus, which doesn't appear to work in all cases, reinstalling Snow Leopard unfortunately appears to be the best strategy to alleviate the problem until Apple has a fix ready.

UPDATE: A commenter noted that Apple Care support technicians have offered another solution which appears to have permanently solved the problem on his machine. Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/, delete any files that contain "windowserver," and reboot the machine. The procedure may need to be repeated if you regularly connect to an external monitor once it is also connected.

Note that the user Library folder is hidden by default on Lion. You can get to it by holding down the Option key in the Finder's Go menu, use the Go To Folder command and paste in the full path, or use Terminal to make your ~/Library folder permanently visible.

3D card drivers causing problems for users? How does this merit a headline, exactly? It's not uncommon to Apple, Linux, Windows or anything else that needs 3D cards.

True that it's common... But the last time bad third-party drivers plagued an OS launch, said OS basically couldn't shake the fame of being a PoS, even though that was blatantly false (*cof* Vista *cof*).

This story hit slashdot a few days ago, and the general response was "Huh? What?" from a bunch of mid-2010 users. While the problem does likely exist it seems to be a lot narrower than generally portrayed. (Not that this version speculates as to the number)

I've seen two laptops bearing this issue. At first we thought it was just Chrome causing problems. Negating the use of Chrome seemed to help, but overall using the gfxCardStatus was the only hard fix at the moment.

I've seen two laptops bearing this issue. At first we thought it was just Chrome causing problems. Negating the use of Chrome seemed to help, but overall using the gfxCardStatus was the only hard fix at the moment.

3D card drivers causing problems for users? How does this merit a headline, exactly? It's not uncommon to Apple, Linux, Windows or anything else that needs 3D cards.

Well I think its important because Apple only has to worry about a handful of graphics drivers for testing and it should work without any issues... New OS or not, this should have been caught in testing.

Well this is just plain stupid, Apple dropping the balls again in the supposed "closed" ecosystem.Issue existed in the beta but wasn't fixed? Real embarrassing for Apple.

I finally got around to installing Windows 7 on my home computers and while I was annoyed to find that HP didn't provide 7 drivers and was getting ready to look for drivers from the manufacturers, I was pleasantly surprised to find up-to-date drivers being offered from the Windows Update menu.

Apple's been doing the same thing but on much smaller and manageable scale (only have to supply drivers for their own hardware) so them failing like this is all the more unacceptable.

lol... shades of Vista, courtesy of nvidia yet again. Awesome. Hopefully HP will allow for Lion installs to use its "legacy printers ;)

I was under the impression that apple wrote all the drivers or at least has a big finger in the pot.That this problem got identified during development and hasn't been fixed or even acknowledged by apple says it all.

I have had this issue and have actually dealt with Apple's techs on this issue and have found a step that has resolved the issue (note that I've had to do it again after adding a different monitor to my MBP, but its still yet to crash after repeating this step).

Crashes have gone down a lot since doing this step (Before removing that preference, I could crash my MBP by entering Mission Control every 3rd or so time, or Versions would crash nearly 100% of the time).

I'm one of those users. The issue is mainly when switching from integrated (intel) to discrete (nVidia) cards.You certainly don't need downgrade, use gfxCardStatus (http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus) an open source gfx card switcher. I haven't had the problem since.I'm just surprised how long this took to come to light. It was a major issue for me within an hour of upgrading to Lion. Bring on the update.

You can see clearly in comments about this story that MANY users do not see this problem.

I have no idea which side is "more" affected, but if it's only hitting a portion of a particular configuration, perhaps the article should say that?

I can clearly see that a couple of the comments here report no known problems, not "many." Support threads at Apple, on the other hand, include hundreds of reports. We didn't say all 2010 MacBook Pro owners are affected, but the limited evidence we have so far suggests there is a significant plurality involved.

We have at "bunch" of mid2010 15 and 17s, of which 1/2 have been moved to Lion - we have one problematic machine with the issue, but apparently it's actually had the issue before Lion. I'm not sure how many machines we have in total, but probably 40 at least.

EDIT: Funny enough my Sony business machine has graphics display adapter has crashed errors in Windows 7 regularly in FF5/Chrome/Flash. I'm pretty sure those display adapter crashes would have been BSODs in WinXP.

I'm writing this on a Macbook Pro 2010 with Lion installed - no problems with video. Only problem has been the way Apple screwed up Spaces going from Snow leopard to Lion. Mission Control (the replacement for Spaces) is a pain.

As I understand it, nvidia just sells parts to Apple. Apple writes, tests and releases the drivers.

I have had this issue and have actually dealt with Apple's techs on this issue and have found a step that has resolved the issue (note that I've had to do it again after adding a different monitor to my MBP, but its still yet to crash after repeating this step).

Crashes have gone down a lot since doing this step (Before removing that preference, I could crash my MBP by entering Mission Control every 3rd or so time, or Versions would crash nearly 100% of the time).

This is something we have not heard about yet. I'll add an update to the article noting this potential fix.

You can see clearly in comments about this story that MANY users do not see this problem.

I have no idea which side is "more" affected, but if it's only hitting a portion of a particular configuration, perhaps the article should say that?

I can clearly see that a couple of the comments here report no known problems, not "many." Support threads at Apple, on the other hand, include hundreds of reports. We didn't say all 2010 MacBook Pro owners are affected, but the limited evidence we have so far suggests there is a significant plurality involved.

So Ars admits it has only "limited evidence" but decides that it warrants an article headline that states there is a problem. Ars also states that it's nVidia drivers that are the problem, when it's Apple drivers for nVidia cards; nVidia can't fix it - not their drivers.

I have had this issue and have actually dealt with Apple's techs on this issue and have found a step that has resolved the issue (note that I've had to do it again after adding a different monitor to my MBP, but its still yet to crash after repeating this step).

Crashes have gone down a lot since doing this step (Before removing that preference, I could crash my MBP by entering Mission Control every 3rd or so time, or Versions would crash nearly 100% of the time).

This is something we have not heard about yet. I'll add an update to the article noting this potential fix.

It seems to have worked for me. I'm not running gfxCardStatus anymore (I was and forcing it to NVidia), the Kernel Panics have been reduced to naught again, where I was able to reproduce them before within 3 minutes with the tech on the phone. It is interesting to note as well that I had these same crashes in Snow Leopard too (I have Kernel Panic's from back then as well).

lol... shades of Vista, courtesy of nvidia yet again. Awesome. Hopefully HP will allow for Lion installs to use its "legacy printers ;)

I was under the impression that apple wrote all the drivers or at least has a big finger in the pot.That this problem got identified during development and hasn't been fixed or even acknowledged by apple says it all.

its always the hardware developers that write the drivers because its their architecture design.

lets say for discussions sake that 5% of all 2010 macbook pros are encountering this issue... lets also say that apple sold 5 million 2010 macbook pros. that leaves the margin of defect to give or take 250,000. in order for technical support to figure out any issues, they must be able to recreate the problem. if it does not happen all the time even on affected machines, then recreating the problem may prove difficult unless someone is willing to give up their machine to apple support so they can identify the fault. pointing to the potential of the problem is only one step towards the solution. the complete route is to recreate it and note the issue down. its difficult to assume when a company gets the information down so they can send it off to the one that does driver support and a company often needs a large sample size before they can determine the real impact of the issue to see if their can be a quick fix through alternative means. driver fixes also have to go through testing as well... which is more time consuming than an alternative terminal fix.

My problem with Apple has always been that they set a release date far too early and stick to it. Without developers finishing the bug reporting. They even do this with things like MobileMe which was a disaster coming out so broken. It is very much the norm for Apple anymore. How hard can it be to support the hardware you designed Apple? I mean its not like Windows where you have several manufactures of computers, lots of hardware to see that its compatible.

We have at "bunch" of mid2010 15 and 17s, of which 1/2 have been moved to Lion - we have one problematic machine with the issue, but apparently it's actually had the issue before Lion. I'm not sure how many machines we have in total, but probably 40 at least.

EDIT: Funny enough my Sony business machine has graphics display adapter has crashed errors in Windows 7 regularly in FF5/Chrome/Flash. I'm pretty sure those display adapter crashes would have been BSODs in WinXP.

Maybe some of the Nvidia issues are the old problems with the die separating from the board because of heat expansion? Sometimes these failures show up on upgrades of OS just because the computer runs pretty hot upgrading at times. I think its fair to say that if it was a deffinate driver issue more users should have the problem. It would be nice to have Apple be more open on the issues.

You can see clearly in comments about this story that MANY users do not see this problem.

I have no idea which side is "more" affected, but if it's only hitting a portion of a particular configuration, perhaps the article should say that?

I read it as some but looked back and thought it was kind of odd. Either way when theres a large group of people that can experience problems unless I see "all" or "catastrophic" or "totally unable" I figure its safe to assume its not affecting everyone.

Mid-2010 15" MBP and no problem here. I've been using gfxCardStatus for quite awhile, but only in cases where I want to force low-power mode and some silly app (Chrome, for instance) insists on switching to discrete graphics.

3D card drivers causing problems for users? How does this merit a headline, exactly? It's not uncommon to Apple, Linux, Windows or anything else that needs 3D cards.

It merits a headline because it contradicts a great deal of rhetoric spewed in support of Apple.

It also merits a headline because some people might actually want to AVOID these problems or work around them. Telling the public at large that the Lion may actually BITE you is a public service and a big part of what journalists are supposed to be doing.

Given the "limited and controlled nature" of the platform, we shouldn't be seeing this sort of stuff.

Expectations are (or rather should be) a bit different when you aren't just throwing darts at a Tiger Direct catalog.

3D card drivers causing problems for users? How does this merit a headline, exactly? It's not uncommon to Apple, Linux, Windows or anything else that needs 3D cards.

It merits a headline because it contradicts a great deal of rhetoric spewed in support of Apple.

It also merits a headline because some people might actually want to AVOID these problems or work around them. Telling the public at large that the Lion may actually BITE you is a public service and a big part of what journalists are supposed to be doing.

Given the "limited and controlled nature" of the platform, we shouldn't be seeing this sort of stuff.

Expectations are (or rather should be) a bit different when you aren't just throwing darts at a Tiger Direct catalog.

This suuuure smells of a bone to pick. Do you honestly believe Apple just didn't care at all? They do MAKE money from OS X and their hardware you know.